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Italy and Vigils and Food, oh my!
Feb. 1st, 2007 07:02 amIt snowed again last night. This is the snowiest and coldest winter I remember since moving to Colorado in '91. We are hosting a vigil tomorrow night for an SCA friend who is being elevated to the Order fot the Pelican. Now vigil's aren't part of my SCA heritage, but I figure I'm trying to learn and want to do things right. So I'm off into the snow this morning to the grocery store and the liquor store to pick up supplies for making rissoles, and daryloles, and cheese and mushroom tarts - and wine and beer and cider. With all that said, and another winter storm rolling in this afternoon, we'll probably have way more nosh than attendees. BUT! We shall be prepared!
I promised the photos of our Christmas trip to Italy, and they are now up at http://www.shutterfly.com/gallery/post/start.sfly?postId=/gallery/1/post/GMGDFg4ctmrRw2ZA1l5WGC. I've captioned most of the way through, and will continue to work on it as I have time. Pompeii and Herculaneum were as wonderful as I imagined, but the real bonuses were Paestum and Opplontis, and I wouldn't have missed either for the world. Let me know what you think.
I finished a reread of Stephen King's The Stand last night. I always go into reading it with mixed feelings of eagerness and fear, it always gives me bad dreams, and I always end with a feeling of satisfaction. It is the only King that I have read (other than one short story early in the 80s) and I will not touch anything else of his. As a rule, I studiously avoid horror because I know the effect that it has on me. But I got hooked on this one by my evil teen age children when it was first on TV over ten years ago, and by the time I had watched the first segement of an episode, and found out at the commercial break what it was, I was hooked and watched all the way through. And then read the book. Post-apocalypic SF is one of my favorite genres, and I think when King wrote this - right at the beginning of his career - he was trying to decide whether to be a science fiction writer or a horror writer. I'm sorry that horror won.
Another book that always gave me the heebejeebees, but that I read again and again, was Barbara Michaels' Ammie Come Home . I finally read it one last time to lead an online discussion on the MPM list and somehow found that the suspense was gone, the images no longer had the power to frighten. I wonder if one reaches a place of familiarity that finally damps the emotion stirred by scary books? Don't know, not enough experience to comment sensibly.
Also finished Anne de Courcy's Deb's at War last week, and that's a stunner. In looking it up on line I somehow got directed to a BBC production called The Camomile Lawn and slowly watched the five episodes of that in a vague conjunction with the reading. I feel I know more about the British in WWII from reading this one book than anything else I've ever read or seen. And it's told, very matter-of-factly entirely from the upper-class female perspective. I had no idea that Britain had female conscription during WWII! How did I miss out on that? I mentioned it to a co-worker who is British and she said yes, her mother worked during WWII and it was hard, afterwards, for her to go back to being a "just" a homemaker. Is there more on this written somewhere? Or is it all just quietly brushed under the table? I do highly recommend this book.
We are searching for a new hotel for our local SF convention. Held the last con two weeks ago and swore we would NOT return to that hotel again. It's gone from somewhat faded and shabby glory to shoddy, smelly, and unkept. Was once a private hotel in which I remember grand holiday brunches a dozen years ago, to ownership by a lowerclass chain which has closed the restaurant (except for breakfast) and the rooms smell of cleaning solvents like walking into a convenience store. Where there used to be weddings and receptions in the (admittedly spacious) meeting rooms, I now think that they open them year to year just for our con, and don't bother to vaccuum in between. So we are off to newer and better digs and finding something with the facilities we want, but not overmuch more, and in the price range we need is and adventure.
I promised the photos of our Christmas trip to Italy, and they are now up at http://www.shutterfly.com/gallery/post/start.sfly?postId=/gallery/1/post/GMGDFg4ctmrRw2ZA1l5WGC. I've captioned most of the way through, and will continue to work on it as I have time. Pompeii and Herculaneum were as wonderful as I imagined, but the real bonuses were Paestum and Opplontis, and I wouldn't have missed either for the world. Let me know what you think.
I finished a reread of Stephen King's The Stand last night. I always go into reading it with mixed feelings of eagerness and fear, it always gives me bad dreams, and I always end with a feeling of satisfaction. It is the only King that I have read (other than one short story early in the 80s) and I will not touch anything else of his. As a rule, I studiously avoid horror because I know the effect that it has on me. But I got hooked on this one by my evil teen age children when it was first on TV over ten years ago, and by the time I had watched the first segement of an episode, and found out at the commercial break what it was, I was hooked and watched all the way through. And then read the book. Post-apocalypic SF is one of my favorite genres, and I think when King wrote this - right at the beginning of his career - he was trying to decide whether to be a science fiction writer or a horror writer. I'm sorry that horror won.
Another book that always gave me the heebejeebees, but that I read again and again, was Barbara Michaels' Ammie Come Home . I finally read it one last time to lead an online discussion on the MPM list and somehow found that the suspense was gone, the images no longer had the power to frighten. I wonder if one reaches a place of familiarity that finally damps the emotion stirred by scary books? Don't know, not enough experience to comment sensibly.
Also finished Anne de Courcy's Deb's at War last week, and that's a stunner. In looking it up on line I somehow got directed to a BBC production called The Camomile Lawn and slowly watched the five episodes of that in a vague conjunction with the reading. I feel I know more about the British in WWII from reading this one book than anything else I've ever read or seen. And it's told, very matter-of-factly entirely from the upper-class female perspective. I had no idea that Britain had female conscription during WWII! How did I miss out on that? I mentioned it to a co-worker who is British and she said yes, her mother worked during WWII and it was hard, afterwards, for her to go back to being a "just" a homemaker. Is there more on this written somewhere? Or is it all just quietly brushed under the table? I do highly recommend this book.
We are searching for a new hotel for our local SF convention. Held the last con two weeks ago and swore we would NOT return to that hotel again. It's gone from somewhat faded and shabby glory to shoddy, smelly, and unkept. Was once a private hotel in which I remember grand holiday brunches a dozen years ago, to ownership by a lowerclass chain which has closed the restaurant (except for breakfast) and the rooms smell of cleaning solvents like walking into a convenience store. Where there used to be weddings and receptions in the (admittedly spacious) meeting rooms, I now think that they open them year to year just for our con, and don't bother to vaccuum in between. So we are off to newer and better digs and finding something with the facilities we want, but not overmuch more, and in the price range we need is and adventure.
